Part-Time Pundit

Overlooked Blog Review – Urbanagora

The point-counterpoint style columns and blogs are ubiquitous and run very close to being cliché. However, Urbanagora overcomes that problem with two solid writers who do the Hannity and Colmes format the right way.

Brian Pierce and Billy Joe Mills are both columnists for the Daily Illini and two of the more influential political writers in central Illinois. They both are solid thinkers who communicate their points well. In fact, it is hard to read anything they write without coming away thinking you can’t really disagree with it.

There commitment to serious discussion with opposing points of view is a refreshing change from the WWE-style form of political discussion that is all-to-common in the blogosphere and cable news channels. In fact, both writing from a college town, they overcome the typical mudslinging that pervades the conversations among the supposed “intellectual elite”. Those mediums spend their time presenting personalities and suck up all the oxygen in the room leaving nothing left for ideas. Billy and Brian bring ideas.

By stimulating serious conversation between opposing points of view, they are doing the University community, and the blogosphere a great service. This is the way political discussion should be done.

If you would like to suggest a blog for the Overlooked Blog Review, please contact John Bambenek at jcb.blog {at} gmail [dot] com.

August 18th, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | Features, Overlooked Blog Review | no comments

What are we Conserving?

One of the most immediate questions that comes up when discussing conservatism is what exactly is it that we are trying to conserve? Is it individual freedom? Is it the power and influence of the “enfranchised”? Is it locking in the racial divide? Or is it a fear of change and psychological disorder as researchers at Berkeley so banally suggested? There is an obvious focus on tradition among conservatives, but why does tradition matter?

In a sense, political philosophy is no different than any other intellectual field. It is a field like any other that studies one facet of the human experience and tries to develop a common language and common principles to analyze, develop, and improve that human experience. Psychology builds upon understanding of how the mind and emotions work. Economics studies how people and groups make decisions with regards to property. Medicine studies how the human body works and how maladies can be healed. This list goes on.

Unlike psychology, economics, or medicine, political philosophy undercuts many different fields at the same time. While it is a question of government structures, organizations, and policies, it also encompasses sociology, economics, morality, and sometimes religion. However, for the purpose of this exercise, we’ll deal with political philosophy as an academic field like any other.

Psychology as a field did not appear overnight. It build upon centuries of human knowledge and exploration before there even was a word “psychology”. It built on ideas that were developed by the long dead. Sometimes those ideas were correct, sometimes they were wrong. Often those ideas were both, having some measure of truth yet missing something. Almost every human intellectual field is the same exact way. It is build upon centuries of experience and inquiry.

Great intellectual breakthroughs never happen in a vacuum without prior footwork. Newton didn’t develop his physics from scratch. However, each breakthrough left some unanswered questions or incomplete explanations. No generation has every claimed to have achieved complete knowledge of the universe, and this generation is no different.

The next generation inherits the intellectual body of knowledge from the previous generation. The knowledge needs to be pruned and improved but very rarely are the ideas that survive in need of being discarded. In this sense, every single one of us is a conservative.

We use the same language as the previous generation, we use the same governmental structure as the previous generations, and we use many of the same conventions as the previous generation. It is simply impossible for a society to recreate its entire body of knowledge with each generation. That would leave each generation trying to recreate work that was already accomplished and leave it absolutely unable to move forward.

However, for some reason, the above idea that every serious person accepts is called into question in the very narrow case of political philosophy. The word “tradition” used in the political context stirs feelings of oppression and victimhood.

The fact is that our governmental form and social institutions have developed over centuries and withstood the test of time. As with all human endeavors there are errors and gaps that need to be dealt with, and in some very rare cases, institutions need to be dissolved (like slavery). As much as some like to say entire institutions need to be razed and modernized, those same people will keep a good deal of political philosophy conserved. For instance, not many people talk about repealing the constitution and starting over.

One of the defining differences between conservatives and others is that when faced with an inadequate institution or policy, conservatives will tend towards cautious reform while others seek to recreate to wheel. The later often falls victim to the law of unintended consequences.

An example of this is health care. In response to concerns about the quality and availability of health care during the 70s, Senator Edward Kennedy [D-MA] created legislation that led to the creation of Health Maintenance Organizations. HMOs are generally considered a large part of the problem with our health care system today; so much so, that the man who created this legislation, Sen. Kennedy, now speaks out against the organizations he helped to bring into existence.

When faced with new problems, conservatives look to conserve what has been created and is worth keeping. Very rarely is it necessary to raze where simple reform is sufficient. New problems can be dealt with by tweak existing organizations and policies, with a particular emphasis on solving problems on the lowest level possible.

It is no mistake that the United States has the strongest economy in the world and is regarded as the world’s only superpower. Conservatives seek to not start fixing what isn’t broken.

August 18th, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | 21st Century Conservatism | 2 comments